Abstract

The tendency to have better control of the flow of electrons in a channel of field-effect
transistors (FETs) did lead to the design of two gates in junction field-effect transistors,
field plates in a variety of metal semiconductor field-effect transistors and high
electron mobility transistors, and finally a gate wrapping around three sides of a
narrow fin-shaped channel in a FinFET. With the enhanced control, performance trends
of all FETs are still challenged by carrier mobility dependence on the strengths of
the electrical field along the channel. However, in cases when the ratio of FinFET
volume to its surface dramatically decreases, one should carefully consider the surface
boundary conditions of the device. Moreover, the inherent non-planar nature of a FinFET
demands 3D modeling for accurate analysis of the device performance. Using the Silvaco
modeling tool with quantization effects, we modeled a physical FinFET described in
the work of Hisamoto et al. (IEEE Tran. Elec. Devices 47:12, 2000) in 3D. We compared
it with a 2D model of the same device. We demonstrated that 3D modeling produces more
accurate results. As 3D modeling results came close to experimental measurements,
we made the next step of the study by designing a dual-gate FinFET biased at Vg1 > Vg2. It is shown that the dual-gate FinFET carries higher transconductance than the single-gate
device.